Hey, there. Little boy.
This had been a shock — he hadn’t known how the woman in the cellar could possibly see him. It was pitch black down there. Only as an adult, could Ashley begin to reason that her pupils had been adjusted to the darkness, while his weren’t. Like Darby’s crafty little shut-one-eye trick.
You’re a nice boy, aren’t you?
He’d cowered there on the steps, covering his ears.
No. Don’t be afraid. You’re not like them. The ghostly voice lowered, like she was divulging a secret: Can you . . . hey, can you please help me with something?
He’d been afraid to answer.
Can you bring me a glass of water?
He wasn’t sure.
Please?
Finally he gave in and raced back up the rotten steps, ran back to his uncle’s rancher, and filled a blue glass in the kitchen sink. The tap water tasted like iron out here. When he came back outside, Uncle Kenny was standing by the open cellar door, his hands braced on his flabby hips.
Little Ashley froze, spilling some water.
But Uncle Kenny wasn’t angry. No, he was never angry. He’d been all jolly smiles, showing yellow horse teeth, plucking the glass from Ashley’s petrified little fingers: Thanks, kiddo. It’s alright, I’ll take this down to her. Hey, why don’t you go walk your baby brother down to the gas station and grab yourselves two chicken flautas, on the house?
The flautas had been dry as sandpaper, withered by the heat lamp. Lars didn’t mind, but Ashley couldn’t finish his.
That same year, a month or two later, Ashley had returned to Uncle Kenny’s a second time for Memorial Day weekend, and he remembered finding that same cellar door propped wide open, with a rattling fan blowing air out. When he descended the steps this time he found the lights on, revealing a bare, gutted bunker, the concrete walls damp with condensation. Scrub marks on the floor. The acrid odor of bleach. The woman was gone.
Long gone.
Even at that age, Ashley had known he should confront his uncle about this, or better yet, tell his parents and let them call the police. And he’d come very close, sitting on that knowledge all weekend like a loaded gun. But that Saturday night, Fat Kenny made macaroni and cheese with jalapenos and whole slices of bacon in it, and told a joke so epically funny it made Ashley spray a half-chewed mouthful.
Hey, Ashley. How can you tell a nigger has been on your computer?
How?
Your computer’s missing.
In the end, he’d simply liked Fat Kenny too much. He was too much fun. And he was genuinely decent to four-year-old Lars, too — letting him carry tools in the workshop, teaching him how to shoot crows with a BB gun. So, bottom line, whatever those truckers were doing with the woman in the bunker ultimately didn’t matter to Ashley. He’d just filed it away in a dark corner of his brain.
That was seventeen years ago.
And now, at the Wanapani rest area in Colorado, on the frigid night of December 23, these roles were shuffled, like a classic TV show returning with a cast of new actors. Ashley himself was the new Fat Kenny, scrambling to protect a damaging secret. And Darby was the accidental witness.
History doesn’t quite repeat itself, but damn, it sure can rhyme.
Ed reached behind the chattering security grate, testing the hot water dispenser, and then separated two bags of coffee grounds. “I’ve got a dark French Roast, and a light.”
“Either’s fine,” said Sandi.
“Dark roast, please,” Ashley said. “As dark as it gets.”
He didn’t actually have a preference; he just liked how dark roast sounded. His taste buds were more or less dead, so all coffee tasted the same to him. But hell, if there was ever a night for jet-black coffee, this would be it. He stuffed Darby’s brown napkin into his jeans pocket, noticing it was smeared with a crescent thumbprint of her blood.
He realized he’d lost sight of her.
Quickly, he scanned the room. Ed was there by the locked coffee stand, Sandi was seated like a fat yellow bumblebee, Lars was guarding the front door — but yes, Darby was gone. She’d vanished. She’d taken advantage of his inattention and made a move.
But it was fine. No worries. Ashley Garver would just make a move, too.
Restroom?
Restroom.
He nodded to his brother.
*
Darby knew she only had a few seconds.
She closed the men’s restroom door behind her without breaking stride, passing the stained sinks, her doppelganger following her in the mirrors. Scar visible, like a white sickle. Haunted eyes in the glass.
Yes, the Wanapani rest area was a pressure cooker. She’d almost gotten Ed and Sandi killed. She needed to get out. She needed to reframe this battle, to relocate it somewhere else. Somewhere without the risk of collateral damage.
I’ll run, she decided. I’ll run up the highway. As fast, and as hard, as I possibly can. I won’t stop until I find signal and call 9-1-1.
Or I’ve frozen to death.
She checked her iPhone again. The screen must have broken when she fell on the toilet, spreading a spider web of deep cracks. The battery was now two percent.
She looked up at the empty window — a triangular little slice of night sky and treetops. It was almost eight feet off the floor. Getting inside had been easy, thanks to the stacked picnic tables outside. Getting outside would be much harder. Even on her tiptoes, she couldn’t reach the window frame. She’d need one hell of a flying leap to catch it with her fingertips. She’d need a running start, and every inch of it.
She backed up, past the green stalls, past PEYTON MANNING TAKES IT IN THE ASS, all the way back to the door, her back touching the wall, and the rectangular restroom stretched out before her like a twenty-foot runway. Smooth linoleum under her feet, slippery with moisture. She arched her back, dug into a runner’s crouch, and closed her hands into fists.
She took a full breath — the bitter smell of ammonia. She let it half-out.
Go.
She ran.
Mirrors, urinals, stall doors, all racing past her. Air whooshed in her ears. No time to overthink. No time to be afraid. She flattened her hands into blades, pumping her legs, and took a hurtling kamikaze leap at the tiny opening—
Mid-air, she thought: This is going to hurt—
It did. She crashed into the tile wall knees-first, bruising her chin, punching the air from her lungs, but (yes!) she’d caught the window frame with two desperate fingertips. Fingernails in the soggy old wood. She braced her wet Converse against the wall. Then she re-arched her back, locked her elbows, and tugged her body upward, gasping through clenched teeth, like the world’s most hellish chin-up bar, and pulled and pulled and pulled—
She heard mouth-breathing. Outside.
No.
No, no, no, please don’t be real—